Edmunds.com sues company over fake reviews

No one’s going to pull a fast one on Edmunds.com—and it’ll go to court to prove it.

The auto-information website noticed something peculiar about some of its posts back in February. So after investigating—gathering email addresses from some 2,000 Edmunds.com accounts—the company discovered that more than 60 reviews of car dealers were coming from a single source. Those accounts traced back to Humankind Design Ltd., which owns Glowingreview.co, a website that offers companies a review-posting service on sites such as Yelp, Foursquare and, of course, Edmunds, among many others. Glowingreviews.co makes claims on its site, such as “Reviews posted by users in the same local area as your business for added legitimacy” and “Slow and steady drip of reviews to avoid the Google Sandbox and make your reviews truly believable.”

“The reviews were obviously not coming from the variety of sources and locations being stated,” Ken Levin, GC of Edmunds, told the Los Angeles Times. “They are just glowing.”

Edmunds filed its suit against Humankind Design yesterday in a Texas court. The company claims fraud and breach of the Edmunds membership agreements.